ah, good point.

Also there is no space between /mnt and /cdrom, just /mnt/cdrom

Just a data CD. Some of the backup work from the damaged computer.


No space between mnt and cdrom. I did it again.

[root@c83-250-90-204 nissanka]# mount /mnt/cdrom
mount: No medium found
[root@c83-250-90-204 nissanka]#

Thats with the CD in the BenQ Drive?

OK, I'm starting to run out of ideas here. Your certain the CD is good, have you another machine you can use to make sure the CD works?

For the sake of curiosity once you have done the above, then try putting the CD in the samsung and doing

It is in the BenQ drive. It is a working CD. I will put another CD and try. I don't have another computer. It is not easy to find people who work with Linux, Solaris, FreeBsd, etc. At school, we have some Solaris computers. I tried this CD about 4 weeks ago at one of the school's Solaris computer.

I know some Solaris too. In Solaris this folder is called '' Vfstab''

The worst case scenario is to reinstall the Mandrake 10.0 again. However, I will toe the line with you all. Please tell me what is the best to do. Now the time here is 23.05pm.

In any case, I will sleep around 24.00.

You are graciously welcome to put a message here when time permits. I take my hat off for all the help.

I mentioned about the worst case scenario. I had no choice. I was forced to do it. I reinstall the program. It formatted the the 3 Linux partitions and installed Mandrake 10.0 version.

Now it recognizes the both BenQ and Samsung CD/RW.

The system is very very slow. It may be the 256 SDRAM is not enough. It takes 2 to 3 minute to get the Open Office Wordprocessor to the screen.

Do you think the RAM memory is not enough? My damaged computer had 768 SDRAM.

What is the reason for the tardiness?

Shall I upgrade to Mandriva 10.2?

256MB is sufficient (though more never hurts ;)).

hmm, make sure you have dma enabled. Sometimes, the kernel doesn't enable dma automatically for stability reasons. If so, that will kill your performace.

As, root, run 'hdparm /dev/hda'. Of course, replace hda with whatever is appropriate if your hd is not the first drive.

Thanks for the message. How do I enable DMA?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[nissanka@c83-250-90-204 nissanka]$ su root
Password:
[root@c83-250-90-204 nissanka]# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 120103200, start = 0
[root@c83-250-90-204 nissanka]#
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can't fathom the above message.

So you have dma enabled. Looks like your problem is elsewhere.

I was having the same problem with my Laptop. But this is a combo driver.
Anyway, let's try something, it shouldn't hurt.
At the boot manager, add "hdd=noprobe hdd=cdrom nomce=1", where hdd is the cdrom drive (your samsung was hdd? oh and yes, of course without the " " ;)
This worked for me fine.